Slay the Spire 2 Review Bombed Over Feminist Consultant Credit
- Sagar Mankar
- 9 hours ago
- 2 min read
Slay the Spire 2 is facing a wave of negative Steam reviews after players discovered the name of feminist media critic Anita Sarkeesian listed as a consultant in the game's credits.
The game, developed by the two-person indie studio Mega Crit, had one of the strongest launches in Steam history. It entered Early Access on March 5, 2026, priced at $24.99, and saw 282,000 concurrent players within its first 24 hours. By March 8, that number had surged to 574,638, placing it among the all-time top 20 most-played titles on the platform.
According to estimates by Alinea Analytics, the game generated over $92 million in Steam revenue within just two weeks, outpacing the lifetime Steam earnings of both Hollow Knight: Silksong and Hades 2. The studio also confirmed 3 million copies sold after the first week alone. Needless to say, the game launched in spectacular fashion.
It was sitting at 97% positive reviews not long after release. Then things started to shift.
Things heated up when players spotted Sarkeesian’s name in the credits. She’s the founder of Feminist Frequency, a nonprofit media critique channel she started in 2009. She’s best known for her Kickstarter-backed video series “Tropes vs. Women in Video Games,” which ran from 2013 to 2017 and explored common sexist portrayals of women in games. The series earned a Peabody Award but also made Sarkeesian a highly polarizing figure in gaming culture.
She became a central target of the GamerGate movement in 2014, a period marked by coordinated online harassment campaigns directed at women and minorities in and around the games industry. Time magazine included her in its list of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2015. Today, she works as a consultant in the area of media inclusivity, which is the capacity in which she is credited in Slay the Spire 2.
Mega Crit has not clarified what her consultation specifically involved. The scope of her contribution to a card-based roguelike, a genre not typically associated with cultural representation concerns, remains unclear.
A discussion thread on the game's official Steam forums asking why she was listed sparked widespread debate, and negative reviews began arriving from players who said they would not have purchased the game had they known. Some requested refunds while the game is still in Early Access.
Sarkeesian’s credit isn’t the only reason the game’s been getting slammed with bad reviews lately. The first wave of review bombing hit right after a big balance patch dropped on March 19, aiming to make “infinite” combos harder and heavily reworking the Doormaker boss fight. The update made Doormaker exhaust cards mid-run, blocked drawing, and jacked up card costs. For many players who rely on infinite combo strategies as their main way to enjoy the game, this was incredibly frustrating.
The combined impact of both waves has significantly lowered the game's recent review score. From an original Overwhelmingly Positive rating of 93%, it fell to Mostly Negative at 37% in recent reviews, with over 31,000 negative reviews pouring in starting April 17. It dipped slightly by May 5, but after the Sarkeesian controversy, it seems to have peaked again.